


Mycroft's Journal

by RiverSoul



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Diary/Journal, M/M, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:17:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverSoul/pseuds/RiverSoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock faked his death, Mycroft has started seeing a therapist. Even when Sherlock is back, he continues seeing her and she tells him to write a journal...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mycroft's Journal

  _After Sherlock faked his death, Mycroft has started seeing a therapist, because he secretly blamed himself for what happened but preferred paying someone to listen to him to talking to his friends and/or family. Even when Sherlock is back, he continues seeing her and as she is generally out of her wits and specifically doesn’t know what to do with this massive brain of his, she tells him to write a journal. Mycroft being Mycroft, he decides to write his journal in the past and in the third person. He tells himself this is because he wants it to sound like a novel, but in reality it just serves his need to create distance between himself and his thoughts and feelings. Let us see how this goes…_

 

Friday, 29th August

 

Dinner had left a sour taste in his mouth. He tried to wash it down with Martini. In vain. Maybe “extra dry” hadn’t been a good choice after all. He was on the verge of something. Or at least he wished he was. All his life he had secretly hoped for a change. But things never really changed. Nor did people. He had always been an enabler. People who didn’t know him thought he was cold, even cruel. But for his friends and family he would do anything. Even if he would never openly admit it. Even if he currently only counted John as his “friend” and that only because John was Sherlock’s… flatmate. And Greg maybe.

 

But the one he cared most about (and who he ironically had always told that caring was not an advantage) was his brother Sherlock. Mycroft had shouted at him, ranted at him, but in truth he could never say no to his little brother. He had enabled him to no end, even if that didn’t always mean giving him what was best for him. In fact, it mostly meant supporting Sherlock’s crazy notions and helping him gradually destroy himself… until John came along, of course. John had been good for Sherlock. Now, their relationship was kind of tense, but Mycroft was sure they would get over it. When he was honest with himself, he actually feared they would get over it and their friendship would come out stronger than ever before.

 

Of course, this was what Mycroft should wish for. But if even his the-opposite-of-social-brother could have friends but he couldn’t, what did this say about him? Mycroft didn’t mind being alone. Except when he did. And when he did, he did so with more desperation than anyone else. Nowadays, he usually turned to drinking, then. Not getting drunk, of course, but just silently sulking with a glass of liquor in front of the fire place.

 

He had tried reaching out in situations like this. If someone asked – if someone cared to ask – he would say that having to look after his younger brother and seeing how the world treated him had turned him cold. But how ridiculous this sounded to his own ears! Parents – or not having them to support oneself – couldn’t change your personality like that. If he had been a different person, he wouldn’t have asked for help, even back then. Especially back then. They had enough relatives, after all. And neighbours. And family friends. But he had never really trusted any of them.

 

Or when he had, he had regretted it afterwards. He remembered this one time he had told his aunt that Sherlock had stolen money from their mothers purse. Mycroft had caught him and his brother had promised to never do it again. And he never had. His aunt had promised to never tell anyone, but the very next day Mycroft had heard her chatting to one of her friends about it. Her apology had been that this friend of hers had problems with her own children and needed some comfort. What comfort, Mycroft had asked himself. That her relatives were even worse? Your kids don’t do good at school? Don’t worry, my nephew steals… Perfect. Just the family Mycroft had wished for. He tried not to be angry with his aunt, though. At least not now, after all this time. If would seem ridiculous. Yet he couldn’t quite forget. And his aunt might be a sweet woman in every other aspect, in his mind he had marked her as a traitor. “People are not infallible”, his father had once told him. But Mycroft had seen this as an excuse, even back then. Nobody had to be perfect, but they could at least try. “My friend needed comfort so I told her all of your secrets” just wasn’t good enough.

 

In some aspects, Mycroft’s brain was as good as Sherlock’s, if not better. But one thing he had never mastered was deleting things. Memories, especially. He wasn’t haunted by the people he had had killed as some of his colleagues were. Because this would mean he regretting their deaths. That they weren’t justified. And Mycroft never doubted his own judgement. But he was haunted by their families. All the wives and husband, children and friends they had left, most of them never finding out what happened to their laughed ones. Sometimes not knowing was a better option. Who really wanted to know that the man you shared a bed with was a killer or that the mother you looked up earned her money cutting people’s throats? Sometimes it was better they just disappeared and never came back. But who was Mycroft to judge over that? He didn’t know what every single of those people felt like? They might feel about this like him, but they might feel in exactly the opposite way.

 

But than everyone made judgements based on assumptions. Therapists, doctors, priest… they all assumed that people ‘in general’ felt, thought and acted in a certain way. They looked at – or read about – a number of people reacting to death, loss or heartbreak and assumed everybody in would act like that. Of course there was “typical behaviour” and “a-typical behaviour”, but this didn’t do the variety of emotions people could have justice. Take John, for example. John loved Mary. But John also loved Sherlock, Mycroft was sure of that. And even if nothing would ever ‘happen’ between them, did this make their love any less valuable? Was Sherlock supposed to move on with his live, stop seeing John and eventually even delete him from his memory? Would this make his life any better? If John was all he ever wanted, would not seeing him be actually be any better than seeing him?

 

And what about Mycroft? Which advice should he give? It was much too late for “Caring is not an advantage” now. But was he just supposed to watch Sherlock get hurt and get hurt again? But then he had done it before, it couldn’t be that hard! It had been heroin before and now John was Sherlock’s drug of choice. Mycroft took painkillers to get to sleep and it clearly said on the package it was for pain, not for sleep. Sleepiness was just a side effect. Strictly speaking, this counted as drug abuse. But the side effects were still less than from actual sleeping pills. And he felt ok after a painkiller-induced night of sleep. So maybe that was just the right thing for him. And maybe being around John was the right thing for Sherlock.

 

Maybe Mycroft had just yet to find the ultimate right thing for himself. But which reason did he have to believe there was a right thing for him? Maybe he would just go through life alone. Maybe even lonely, but this was still better than being in a bad relationship, he guessed. It was like the difference between suffering from side effects and suffering from withdrawal. Not that Mycroft had much to withdraw from. Most of the time, he felt that his hands worked just as well as any other’s. Not for feeling, of course. But feelings were just an illusion anyway. So if he imagined to be in love, it should be just as good as the real thing, shouldn’t it?


End file.
